Gallon to Liter Calculator test.

One of things I believe in when developing is testing. One test I'm currently running is for the Gallon to Liter Calculator site. The site has been running for nearly six months now.

The test was to see if I could create a site that was .com instead of .com.au and see if the site would gain traction worldwide, or even just in America. The reason is Australia is a small market and if I could build a website that didn't appear to be based in Australia there was greater potential for more traffic.

The result so far is it has been disappointing financially, but not a total failure. OK, a financial failure but it provides useful information.

As an Australian you'll notice the spelling of liter in the domain name. This is the American spelling and not the Australian spelling. Does it matter? Yes. Not only for the intended audicence but also to Google.

In terms of ranking, "gallon to liter" versus "gallon to litre" has an average position of 12 versus 16.4. So spelling does matter. There's also around five times as many impressions for the liter spelling in Google search results versus the litre spelling.

The site statistics show the greatest number of visitors come from Canada. A check of the position for  the search "gallons to litres" returns the following positions:

Google.ca - 18
Google.com - 18
Google.com.au - not in top 100
Google.co.uk - 18

Using the .com domain has certainly made a difference in terms of not appearing in searches from Australia.

The Gallon to Liter Calculator is a useful tool for converting gallons to litres. It hasn't been a financial success, but it does generate some interesting information.

When testing your website's presence on the internet, if you make a change measure the position before the change, wait until perhaps 1-2 weeks after Google has picked up the change (you can check the cached version in Google for when it was last scanned) and then measure again. You really do have to be patient. Making too many changes at once means you won't know which change made ranking betters and which changes perhaps made things worse.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
IT support

Optus increases price of 100 GB mobile broadband plan.

I was a bit surprised to see Optus increase the price of it's 100 GB plan. Previously the price was $70 per month and the price has now increased to $80 per month.

To be fair when I first saw the $70 plan it only included 50 GB. Optus then offered double data which brought the plan to 100 GB. For a short while in May Optus even offered 140 GB of data for $70 a month.

Today when I checked prices the price has gone up and is now $80 for 100 GB a month. You really don't know what Optus is going to do with their mobile broadband pricing, but I didn't expect to see the price increase.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
IT support.

Turn off push notifications in Safari under macOS.

I have to admit I'm not a fan of push notifications. I think the push notification feature could be pretty useful, but the real problem is more and more sites I visit want to ask me for permission to send push notifications. It's just another nag I don't need. Really, what's the chance I want to receive a notification from the many, any sites I visit. Almost zero.

If however there was a site I followed and let me know they had push notifications that I could sign up for, that's another matter. I'd find that in theory potentially useful. But in time it's possible every site you visit will be nagging you for permission to send push notifications.

Get ahead of the curve. If you're not interested in push notifications you can disable the feature in your browser. In Safari under macOS you do this as follows.

Open Safari
Select Safari (in the menu)
Select Preferences
Select Websites
Select Notifications
Remove the tick from Allow websites to ask permission to send you push notifications.

Ah, peace and quiet, until the next piece of technology is created for marketers to keep us "informed". Don't get me wrong, it sounds like I'm not a fan of this technology but I am. I'm simply not in favour of technology that nags me to do something so often, when I'd rather opt in if I choose to.

Kelvin Eldridge
Online Connections
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
IT support.

Free unlimited mobile broadband for six months on TPG's new mobile network.

Later this year TPG will launch their own mobile network. As part of the launch it appears TPG will be offering six months of free mobile broadband as an introductory offer. After the six months the cost will be $9.95 a month.

The following is a link to the press announcement (https://www.tpg.com.au/about/media.php).

I think this is an excellent offer and felt it would be good to let others know. It's pretty hard to beat free. 

There's couple of details to be aware of though. The coverage is a bit limited at this stage, but if you're in or near the major city areas, the offer could be very useful. The areas covered are listed in the press announcement. In terms of unlimited in TPG's case, this means 1GB a day with no restriction and then if you go over this limit, you'll be slowed to 1 mbps.

The speed of 1 mbps is still OK, but not generally good enough for live streaming. The speed of 1 mbps is around 450 MB per hour. Generally you'd need around at least 2-3 times this speed to watch standard definition TV and more for higher definition. However, if you're steaming to a mobile phone and/or a service that enables you to stream at a lower quality, it's worth giving it a go. If your service allows you to download videos for offline use then you can still watch videos, but you'll just have to wait longer.

In terms of hardware keep in mind you'll need some type of mobile broadband device, which will probably need to be unlocked. An older 4G mobile phone could also be used as Wi-Fi access point. You may also try older 3G devices. I've used 3G broadband devices with SIMS capable of 4G and they've worked, but at slower speeds. As soon as I get a TPG SIM I'll test it out on a range of devices.

I have to say I am looking forward to seeing what TPG's new offers will be. For some people the $9.95 a month mobile broadband plan will be all the broadband they need. No need to pay for an NBN service if your needs are less.


Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
IT support.

Block all notifications in Google Chrome.

Ever get the feeling there's yet another way to get annoying prompts. For some people those pop-ups that ask you if a site is allowed to send notifications or not is simply another annoyance.

The good thing is instead of saying no to each notification you can simply turn off all notifications. That is notifications will be blocked from all sites.

To block all notifications click on the three dots at the top right in Google Chrome.
Select Settings.
Scroll to the bottom and click Advanced.
In the Privacy and security section click on Content Settings.
Click on Notifications.
At the top there's a slider for the setting Ask before sending (Recommended).
Slide this slider to off.

Notifications will now be blocked. The problem with the Notifications screen is you don't know there's a blocked setting until you move the slide to the left.

Peace and quiet now those pesky notifications are gone. Of course if you like to receive notifications from one or more sites, you just have to respond to each and every site with a no or a yes as you're prompted.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.Onlineconnections.com.au
IT support.

Apple lightning to USB camera adapter (adaptor) - Cannot Use Device

I purchased an Apple lightning to USB camera adapter (adaptor) to make it easy to transfer pictures from a Nikon Coolpix S3400 to an iPad Air 2. I'd previously purchased the lightning to SD Card Camera Reader and that worked well.

I wanted to test the USB camera adapter (adaptor) as not all cameras use SD cards. In addition plugging the cable direct from the camera to the iPad reduces the steps to get a picture from the camera to the iPad for those who wish to post to social media.

What was weird is when I purchased the USB camera adapter  the Apple salesperson said if I had any problems they were happy for me to return the adaptor. I'd not previously had an Apple salesperson say this about any Apple product previously. In hindsight that probably should have been a red flag.

When I plugged the USB camera adapter (adaptor) to connect the iPad Air 2 to the camera the iPad Air 2 displayed the message: "Cannot Use Device".

The reason for the device not able to be used was: "The connected device requires too much power."

Once you get this message there's usually not much you can do, except return the device to the Apple store and get a refund. This is what I did and there was no problem returning the adaptor.

Apple does have another USB camera adaptor which has a power input. In theory this may avoid this issue of the iPad trying to provide power to the external device. However, whilst $45 was hard to justify to the original adaptor, spending $59 for the adaptor requiring a power cable was harder to justify. The real problem was to transfer photos with the USB camera adaptor with the power cable required a power point or a battery bank. This becomes even more clumsy than the SD car reader adaptor.

The bottom line is this device did not work.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
IT support.

Uber self-driving car hits and kills a woman walking their bike across a dark road in Tempe Arizona.

When I read the news items and watch the video on this terrible event of an Uber self-driving car hitting and killing a person, it pains me that at first reports that Uber or the driver was possibly not at fault. The statement that the person appeared out of the dark and the collision may not have possibly been avoided is unbelievable.

The person had walked three quarters across a two lane road when they were hit. When the person became visible they were already across the first lane and into the second lane of the car on a two lane highway.

Even if we accept that a person may not have seen the person in time, since they only had about a second to respond, which is not sufficient for a human driver, you would think a self-driving car has a number of advantages over a human.

Firstly you would think they would use sensors to detect what is ahead. If the sensors don't then something isn't right. Perhaps an infra-red sensor is needed to detect heat signatures of moving objects. In Australia a kangaroo often jumps out from the side of the road with a moments notice. If a person who has already crossed one lane and is into the second lane of a two lane highway is not detected, we'd have no hope with kangaroos and possibly other wildlife.

It is truly sad when we place such technology onto our roads for something like this to occur. The self-driving car industry needs to be held accountable. I think even the average man can see this isn't good enough. It isn't a matter of whether or person could have done better, it really should be the technology in the car far exceeds the capability of humans as sensors are available that we as humans are not endowed with.

It does may me wonder whether or not those in government are making sure appropriate levels of technology are being incorporated into cars to ensure we are safe in what is a fairly likely accident situation that we as humans may not be able to avoid, but technology should be able to easily avoid.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
IT support.

PS. I'm reluctant to post a link to the news article containing the video, but it's the only way people will know the situation around the event. Otherwise we just guess as I did the person stepped out in front of the car, perhaps next to the car, with no warning or possibility of anticipating such an accident. (https://www.recode.net/2018/3/21/17149428/uber-self-driving-fatal-accident-video-tempe-arizona) Please don't watch this video if seeing the video of a car about to hit a person will affect you in any way. It is something I'd rather not watched which I can't take back. My desire to understand the technology and the limitations of the technology, so I can advise and guide others, and use it myself, made it hard for me not to seek out further information.